The road has led to Boulder’s discovery, to residents’ chagrin. ‘We wanted it for us, not tourists,” says rancher Del LeFevre, who pushed for the paving. Of his erstwhile desire for tourist trade, the former rodeo cowboy says: ‘It was like buying a horse without riding it.’

Any other small town losing its economic moorings would probably consider a new road that brought in tourists and their money a godsend.

Not this ranching community that clings to its isolation amid some of the most spectacular scenery in the country. To its great chagrin, Boulder has been discovered and, worse, fractured by the fallout.

“We wanted it for us, not tourists,” says rancher Del LeFevre, trying to explain why he pushed for paving State Route 12 and upgrading the popular Burr Trail Road as a Garfield County commissioner in the 1980s.

Completing the stretch of highway that winds down the north slope of Boulder Mountain was meant to maintain the town’s threatened lifestyle of ranching and living off the land, he says.

But the well-intentioned attempt to provide a safer, quicker passage out of town has backfired. State Route 12 is ensconced on most travel guides as a must-see tour through mountain forest and slickrock canyon.

Since the final section of blacktop was laid in 1985, the number of tourists stopping at Anasazi State Park in town has tripled to an estimated 60,000 this year. Park Supt. Larry Davis said double that number drive by en route to another park.

President Clinton’s decision last month to designate a new 1.7-million-acre national monument won’t aid residents’ desire for isolation either. Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument begins just south of town.

But monument status might help stem the rampant land speculation hereabout, as well as the demands of developers hoping to cash in on the public’s discovery of an unspoiled Western outpost. Clinton’s designation, after all, was intended to keep it unspoiled.

Longtime residents can’t get used to the changes already wrought, however.

“This place has become so diverse nobody gets along anymore,” Jim Demay says.

The 58-year-old retiree sits on a porch near the Burr Trail Cafe along with other locals who make up the “Codger Committee,” a group of wags who try to bring some levity to the troubling transition happening around them.

There is no dearth of topics. The gossip shifts from dispute to dispute among an evolving population of what locals estimate is 225 ranchers, retirees, telecommuters, artists, environmentalists and government workers.

The tiffs generally involve natives vs. newcomers, non-Mormons against Mormons and ranchers bashing environmentalists. And everyone snipes at the town hall and the water company.

“It’s a shame,” Demay says. “If they could drop their guards we would have the best community in southern Utah.”

Roads have always been an issue since Mormon ranchers and dairy farmers settled the valley in the late 1880s. The issue in bygone days was the lack of access.

The first passable dirt road into the area wasn’t cut until the Depression by the Civil Conservation Corps. With completion of the Hell’s Backbone Road in 1939 came the end of mail delivery to Boulder by mule.

Electricity first lighted homes in the 1940s and phone service arrived only in the early 1960s.

Not until 1971 could motorists drive into town from the south on a paved road that still twists through the red sandstone cliffs and buff-colored petrified sand dunes of the Escalante Canyons. Approaching the town, the road winds--without guardrails--atop a ridge, giving travelers an endless view of canyons, cliffs and mountains.

The same road heading north out of town and through the heavily wooded slopes of Boulder Mountain wasn’t entirely paved until 1985. It was the final piece in county and state boosters’ plan to promote Highway 12 as part of a circuit through southern Utah’s national parks and recreation areas--which include Zion, Bryce, Capitol Reef, Glen Canyon, Cedar Breaks, Arches and Canyonlands.

LeFevre now admits he didn’t know what he was asking when he argued at the time that Boulder--where the current average monthly wage is $826--could use some tourist trade.

“It was like buying a horse without riding it,” the 49-year-old former rodeo cowboy admits.

Locals say tourists funnel through in cars, buses and motorcycle caravans and hound residents about buying land.

Demand has sent property prices soaring. Taxable value of 13,440 acres within the town has increased from $2.9 million in 1990 to $5.1 million this year.

The chance to make a quick buck is not lost on the land-rich, cash-poor ranchers who own most of Boulder. They complain of low prices and environmental regulations slowly killing the ranching, logging and mining industries that sustained the town in the past. Most ranchers hold down second jobs to pay the bills.

But the development most Boulder residents now see as unavoidable will be anything but smooth. A philosophical battle over zoning and property rights has indefinitely stalled planning efforts.

Meantime, developers are chopping vast tracts of land into small lots. County records show this year’s parcel count at 276, compared with 190 in 1990. And town leaders acknowledge they’re ill-prepared for the ongoing transformation of Boulder.

“There’s nothing we could have done better,” says Councilman Ray Thompson, who retired here from Texas nine years ago and was appointed to the town board this year. “We didn’t have the resources and we don’t have them now.”

But Mark Austin, who arrived and built the Boulder Mountain Lodge four years ago, believes the problems run deeper than just a sleepy town suddenly awakened by a stampede of outsiders.

He describes townspeople as fiercely independent souls who try to impose their lifestyle and values on newcomers. Austin is a designer-contractor who, with a partner, has sunk $1.3 million into the lodge and is planning a subdivision outside of town.

The run-ins between Austin and town leaders have become part of town lore. The mayor nearly had Austin arrested when he poured a foundation for his restaurant without a disputed permit. Now Austin is suing the town for denying him a liquor license.

He calls the denial religious discrimination by a town board dominated by Mormons who consider drinking a sin. Others call it a public safety issue and a matter of preserving the local culture.

Mayor Julee Lyman says Austin came to town demanding too much, too soon. She hopes his venture succeeds. “But you don’t come in here saying, ‘You are stupid country hicks,’ and then try to change the culture and custom of this community,” she says.

Demay and others agree that Austin, who is also in court with a longtime resident over a water dispute, has a confrontational style that doesn’t sit well with the natives.

But Billie Jones, the owner of the Burr Trail Cafe, believes Austin’s battles with town hall will--when the dust settles--pave the way for others to locate in Boulder.

Jones, who came to Boulder in 1984 as a truck driver for the road construction crews and never left, predicts newcomers will eventually take over the town hall, which could mean future tourists will drink a glass of wine with dinner and land will be rezoned.

“They’ve created their own style of life here and don’t want it changed,” she says of the old-timers. “But they opened it up to others with the road over the mountain.”